You’re going to make some ugly quilts. I don’t say this to intimidate or discourage anyone but I need to share some tough love with you here. I wish someone had told me that some of my well-thought-out and perfectly-planned efforts were going to turn out some real stinkers, and that it is okay. This quilt for example, it one of my worst.
Now before I say anything else I need to say that I really like pastels when I see them. They are sweet and deliver to my mind thoughts of new babies, springtime and Easter. Having said that, I rarely purchase them. I tire of them quickly and don’t have a single shred of pastel in my house or wardrobe. When I was choosing fabrics for this quilt however, I was trying to reach out of my comfort zone and work with fabrics I wasn’t naturally attracted to. Well, you can see that the result wasn’t good. It is pretty devastating when I come to the realization that whatever I have been working on is terrible and that I have been wasting my time. Experience has taught me that I learn something new every.single.time I make something. With this quilt, I learned several things:
First, I really don’t like working with pastels. I tire of them even more quickly than I thought I did. It got to the point that it was chore to get this stuff out to work on it. That’s never good. I learned again that if I don’t like looking at it, chances are, I’m not going to finish it.
Second, there isn’t even the tiniest bit of white space for my eyes to rest. My eyes just dart around hoping for relief that never comes. I thought that the striped blocks would add the pattern and the solid blocks would add the stillness. Yeah, I was wrong. Ugh! I’m getting a headache just looking at it on the screen.
Third, I learned that I needed to stop being afraid of white space and embrace it. The next 20 quilts I made, I did nothing but experiment with white space.
If I liked the colors of this quilt more I think I would take it apart, add some white space to it and finish it, but instead I think it is on it’s way to Goodwill. I hope it finds its way into the hands of a lovely seamstress/quilter who can’t ever get enough pastels and will make something wonderful from what I started. So my advice when you make an ugly quilt, and you will?? Cut your losses, learn what you can from it and move ahead to the next project.
